e it is moral to regulate
life by fear, considering only the desire to remain undisturbed of those
who are decayed and petrified. I do not know if I make my meaning clear.
As our habit, we ignore or minimize all sex difficulties as much as we
can; we hesitate and compromise and bungle over every reform because we
are afraid of what may happen if we probe down to the real bottom of
what needs to be done. We have neither the courage of our bodies or of
our souls. This is why so often our attitude becomes false and our
thoughts entangled, so that our moral life is corrupt with concealments
and deceptions. Now, I am not content with the compromise which
sanctions every form of sexual sin so long as the conventions are
respected and the sin hidden--all the rottenness going on beneath the
respectable structure of our society. I want as far as is possible to
emancipate our lives from such slavery; to make less easy the hypocrisy
which law and custom sanction; to gain freedom from a sham morality and
the pretense of a righteousness that we do not maintain. It is a
necessary step, for me at least, on the way to any kind of improvement.
More and more I am convinced that we shall have to make a violent and
very conscious effort to get clear of dishonesty.

That is why I am advocating, as a first most necessary reform, simpler
and more decent facilities of divorce. I plead for a greater breadth of
toleration, with a more honest facing of the facts, because I have known
in my experience the degradation, the falsity and the absurdities that
are going on to-day; the deceptions into which everyone is driven who is
unfortunate enough to have to seek relief, under the present disgraceful
divorce laws, from a marriage that has failed. There are conditions
which degrade and embitter and make honorable conduct very difficult.

A great number of people, regarding marriage as a mystical and,
therefore, unbreakable sacrament, object to divorce under any
circumstances whatever. This is the case in Catholic countries, such,
for instance, as Spain, the land I know and love so well. Such an
attitude I can understand and respect, though I do not consider it a
practical proposition, and know, moreover, that indissoluble marriage,
in some ways, works very harmfully. It prevents hasty marriage. In Spain
marriage is regarded as the gravest and most momentous step in life; but
this caution does not altogether work out for good in the way one might
expe